Burned out flames should never reignite
by agirlwithacoin
Summary: Post Season 3. She advances like a conqueror; She is Elena, but intensified and angry. It is an emotion he has seldom encountered in this thrice removed face (She nearly flickers, growing taller, shrinking down, and errant candle flame).


Rating: M

Fandom: Vampire Diaries

Warning: Smut, 3x22

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, I'm just borrowing it. And doing things with it that would most likely make the writers blush.

Prompt: vd_kink, "Elena/Elijah - spoilers after the finale; she's got all of this pent up rage and emotions now; he's got anger and disappointment."

The spray from the shower reminds him of warm rain; spills across his skin in a heady mixture of nostalgia and sensation that makes his other senses dull in the island of tile, and water, and plastic shower curtain. The shower head is tall, clears his head by at least an inch, and arches from the wall like the slender neck of a giraffe; he is left with the impression that it ought to have spots. With his head under the water, he doesn't hear the door open, doesn't notice the sensual slither of fabric over skin as she kicks off her heels, nor the stick of her feet to the tile, and certainly doesn't detect the emptiness that should be occupied by the flutter of her heart. He hears only the pulse of water; an ocean in his ears, a river down his back so abruptly interrupted by tiny hands.

He is a whirl of motion; she is a fish in his grip, pinned hard to the cold wall of his shower, back arched, mouth open, water beading like diamonds on skin soft as a whisper, hair fine as mist. She is hot and cold all at once; a flash fire and a storm encased in flesh and trying to escape. She remains fully dressed, and yet so immodest; fabric adheres like liquid to a saturated form. If she is anything, she is a charcoal sketch (He is reminded unpleasantly of Niklaus); the lines of her run together under the deluge, and leave faint traceries behind. Her dress is short; her stockings peel down under the weight of themselves like so much unnecessary skin, and the bronze of her flesh is bisected by straps that cut her into geometric shapes-they disrupt the smooth curves that he knows hide underneath.

"Katarina…" He says, a condemnation given words, but no, his thumb is pressed to her pulse; there is no tremor in the flesh-no heartbeat to sustain the body-and yet the details are still incorrect. Her hair curls in the humidity, but she trembles-Looks at him like a rabbit, but refuses to run; stares defiant into his old eyes-and Katarina never would. He removes his hand from her throat, pulls back as if burned and thinks idly that in the morning she will be decorated; throat adorned with a choker of bruises in jewel hues-no, that's not right either. She will never bruise again. She doesn't seem alarmed, or even bothered; Her smile curves her mouth like an omega-She wears violence up to her elbows (at her edges, at her angles) like the gloves of a fine lady. He is far too vulnerable for that smile, and takes a step back. It is cowardice of the wisest sort, but he could never run fast enough to get away from her.

She advances like a conqueror; She is Elena, but intensified and angry. It is an emotion he has seldom encountered in this thrice removed face (She nearly flickers, growing taller, shrinking down, and errant candle flame), and he backs up again; a warrior queen could hold herself no more rigidly-a virgin sacrifice going to her death could exude no more self-righteous fury. Her hands on him are as gentle as he imagined, and all the more unkind for withholding that which he deserves. Her name slips out like the half-remembered notes of a lullaby, and she guides him with coaxing fingers backwards to the wall. It presses uncompromising against the flesh of his back; it is cold, it is hard, it hurts where it digs into the ridges of him under the flesh, and yet he thinks perhaps that it is his own doing, because this Elena's cruelty is in her kindness. She leans in close; he feels the uncomfortable stick of sodden fabric, and hwer whisper drags across his skin like a blade.

"You let me die."

His sin-his ultimate foible-is that he will spend eternity forgiving his family, and watching the mess they make of second chances. The youngest Salvatore had called him in grief-stricken recrimination where the elder had had no words to express the extent of his bitterness; he had known of Elena's death but not her resurrection, and though this is no story of Lazarus and the messiah he feels a selfish surge of gratification-it's not too late. She never wanted this; she has said so many times, and yet he finally understands the actions of Damon Salvatore the day before the kindest of the dopplegangers had marched to her death in grace and good faith. Her preservation is almost more important than his personal perdition. Fingers that nearly tremble-he is at the edge of something large and incomprehensible, after all-move up to touch her face. It is not what she wants; the flicker of emotions across her features says this much at least, and yet she leans into the touch.

"I did."

Elena does not need excuses, nor does she deserve them. In the broadest sense, she is a woman that demands honesty because she (usually) embodies it, and not out of some misguided sense of entitlement. If she were alive, he knows that her heart would vibrate like film feeding through an old projector-knows because he has memorized her reactions-but her face remains clear, and she looks at him with a gaze that makes him ache because it is very Elena. She will forgive him, but it is not in her to soften the blow, and the fact that there is no accusation in her tone makes him want to clutch her closer. He forces fingers through the tangling coils of her hair, uses his thumbs to tilt her chin up so that he can look upon her unimpeded, and cradles her jaw as if she is fragile or precious.

"I suppose I should get used to you breaking your promises to me."

She says it gently. He's not sure if his heart has ever felt such pain-not even from his father's blade that pierced him like an insect. He is encompassed and scrutinized; he is laid bare as an anatomical model, and she is a magnanimous hand that covers his raw nerves with a blanket. If he were a different man, he might be driven to tears. Instead he kisses her.

She lets him, but it is too gentle, and too tender for the situation; she forgives him, but will not excuse him. She cares for him, but she is young and emotional enough that she hates him too-just a little. Perhaps, indeed, forgiveness is too strong a word for what is happening here; She will not lie to him (not now, not again). He finds that he almost wants her to.

She pulls away; there is sadness in the cast of her features, and the way she stands, but she gently extricates herself from his hold like a gardener removing the twining vines of a climbing rose. She turns her back to him, pulls hair that now consists of parabolas (curved as the line of her hip. The word kinky comes to mind) over one shoulder, and turns her head to peer at him. She's bared her zipper to his greedy eyes, and looks at him with a calm expectancy that confuses and worries him. He finds himself nonplussed in the truest sense of the word. His fingers (they feel so clumsy, so thick against the dainty teeth that keep her dress together; the tiny clasp is more fit for a doll than a woman) stray to the base of her neck, and stroke there. Her hair is a crown of thorns around her head; she has never been more beautiful.

"Elena-"

He starts, but never finishes; her expression goes rigid, and she tilts her chin-he wonders where she learned to do that, how she can look so imperious when compared to him her life is as short as that of a butterfly (beautiful, full of color, but ultimately meaningless in its brevity).

"You owe me. Don't presume to second guess my choices. Not you."

She says it haughtily. She's too young (too old), too fragile to sound like that; she could no more be Katarina than Katarina could be Tatia. She is pretending; he understands, appreciates, but wants to offer criticism, because though she is a Petrova, she will never be a woman (Not now that she too is paused forever in time) who changes alliances like most people discard shoes. If she cannot bring herself to hate Elijah of all people, what hope is there for this girl with no more constellations in her eyes?

He leans forward, pushes a tiny curl off of her nape with a hand that half covers the column of her throat, and leaves a kiss behind. It's a gift. It's a burden. It's an apology.

"For what it's worth, I knew the day that you returned to the Lockwood house that I loved you."

It sounds pathetic coming from him, but it is true, and she does not deny him. Elena is no oracle (he imagines flowers in her hair, her body wreathed in smoke; it suits her) and yet she understands him as Katarina did, and Tatia before her. She stands still and placid as a statue under his hands, though her lashes (so thick, so fine) brush her cheeks as he draws that forbidden zipper downward and they are so dark it is a wonder streaks of ink are not left in their wake.

"It's worth nothing."

The statement is very cruel, and very true. It cuts, and he wonders that he doesn't bleed dribbles of pink to be washed away by water turning tepid. Neither of them feel it; not really-his pain distracts where her restlessness enamors, and she slides out of her dress like a snake shedding its skin, or a dragon rending scales to display a woman (girl, really) underneath. Her defrocking looks painful; a forced metamorphosis, but she rips away the layers of herself without comment. The shucked dress falls to the floor of his shower with an ungraceful noise, and in an act that could be identified as, or at least labeled spite, Elena Gillbert kicks the sodden mess out of the shower. It flies heavy across the bathroom, and plops to the floor with a finality that suggests she will never don the garment again.

She twirls like a pinwheel, careless and on tiptoes; there is nothing to keep her from sliding on the tile-nothing but him. Her underwear is lacy; ruffles on a doily, tiered frosting on a cupcake, shiny paper and twining bows on a particularly well-wrapped present. He can see the possible future unfolding in slow motion; she slips on water, topples down like a tower of china plates-her skull hit's the edge of the shower. She cracks open like an egg, blood is left in a starburst on his tile. He can practically smell the salt-copper taste of it-can imagine her face going slack as if in sleep-A Snow White fallen from the pages of her fairy book, leaving fingerprints across the ridges of his ribs, and sinking hands into his heart. The look on his face must be tender, because she laughs, and it is the tinkle of a crack spreading across glass. His fingers slide along the water slick surface of her skin. He needs to touch her, or he doesn't know what will happen; it's nearly a novelty for someone his age.

He wraps his arms around her. She lets him, and leans in, cheek tender against his collarbone. Her fingers are gentle; she is sanguine in everything about this moment, but she is not a child, and he is not her father. He is surprised to feel the tickle of her tongue, kitten-like against the plane of his breastbone; she lets water run into her mouth, and her hair sticks to both of them like clammy strands of seaweed intent on pulling them under-She is Yeats' mermaid, but he is more than willing to drown.

"I don't have any answers for you."

He tells her abruptly; it is not his way, but he finds himself speaking in a stutter whenever she's around. He'd like to be eloquent (elegant), and poised, but she makes him a mess, scatters his pieces like a girl plucking a chicken (bloody feathers litter the floor). Elena Gillbert puts him back together wrong, and he can't quite bring himself to fault her for it.

"I haven't asked you any questions."

'And I never will' is unsaid, but what came before cannot be ignored; they have a past of lies and half-truths and they've darkened the pages of their shared history with eradicated scribbles, and partially formed sentences until the paper has turned quite gray and curled up at the edges.

He's played this game before. Katarina had such a sweet smile, but she was a snake underneath, and poison calls to poison. His suspicion notches his thumbs along the swell of her shoulders, and holds his arms extended so that he can look at her. Her features are tight, expression nearly rotten; as if she might burst from the tension of it all-the thrum of anger under her flesh. He imagines her shedding skin like another useless garment, and abandoning that too on the floor of his bathroom. She is a girl with nothing to lose, but nothing to gain either, and it confounds him.

"What do you want?"

He says it in a whisper; a half breathed query that sounds more heartbroken than he wants, and more vulnerable than he intends. It's like she's cracked him open; thrust fingers up under the wings of his rib cage and pulled until he splits, useless and defeated as a shellfish in the sun. She's not his everything; she's just a girl, but he thinks that he loves her, and he's not sure when that started to matter so much. He's a man with impervious (nearly) control, but control does not necessarily indicate understanding,a nd he wonders if he's ever known much about himself.

Her dark gaze is obsidian; the eyes of a wild thing. She is a beast prowling in a pen, nearly vibrating with unrealized violence and emotion. She is tightly wound, standing rigid, and dancing with quick steps along the razor-edge of breaking. Her nails dig into his ribs, she clenches her jaw and squeezes; she leaves painful crescents in her wake.

"I want to hurt you."

She sounds nearly disappointed with herself. He's disappointed too. Her brows fall, and her fingers trail over slick skin (pale to tanned, his to hers.) to the tiny bow joining the cups of her plain black bra. He feels his eyebrows rising; what else can he do? She discards another layer, drops it to the side, stands vulnerable and defiant before him. He is struck again by the fact that she is so very young; she is used to boys, not men, and stands in challenge, daring him to say a word.

She saunters forward. She is a leopard; he is going to his death, and taking strides to meet it in the middle, but he too has lost someone this day, and his shoulders straighten. Elena will have none of it. Where her touches were silk before, they are iron now; she pushes at him-an impotent kitten lashing out at a lion in a rage so miniscule as to be incomprehensible to the greater beast. His actions are reprehensible; she is pushing buttons, and he has suffered to much to remain so tightly laced.

She melts like chocolate when he slams her back into the tile; as if that's what she wanted all along. The impact of her skull against wet ceramic (he's not sure what the tiles are made of; it doesn't matter) is just as he imagined it might be. Her hair clings wet against the wall, his hand grips the underside of her thigh (he's too tall-she's not where he wants her, but he makes do), she yanks strands of his hair and doesn't pull away.

She bares her teeth; it's skin against slippery skin, and the water has turned cold. He's not sure if they're going to fuck, or fight-can't decide which one he wants more at this point, because the cracks in his composure feel a lot like despair (like being crushed; he has not felt this vulnerable in centuries), and maybe she's losing herself, but he feels as if he's lost two people in one fell swoop.

When she kisses him, it is almost a surprise; a gift of teeth, the hot slide of her tongue against his lips, and the strength of her fingers against his skull. He opens his mouth, can taste that she is drowning; she clutches him like an oxygen mask underwater. He should be better, but finds that when it counts, he's really not. He kisses her back, tongues and teeth; they both resonate with barely controlled violence channeled into a lust that rages out of control. She sends heat crawling down his throat and into his belly; he rubs against her shamelessly. He bites her in surprise when she grabs his cock (fingers slide; she's not gentle. He doesn't want her to be), and blood runs carmine to pool in the arch of her clavicle. He sucks at skin, and rocks into her grip, breathing hot against flesh gone chilly under the relentless spray.

He pushes her hand away, ignoring the way he throbs in her absence; he's tired of playing games. She fights him, but ultimately he is stringer; his fingers curled in the lace of her panties remind him of Christmas morning. He rips her open like a present, tosses lace aside, and squeezes her hip hard enough that if she were still human, she might be creaking. Her hands go to his shoulders; her fingers curl, her hair tangles against her arms (twining, twirling, she is sticky and trapped) and she lifts her other leg to welcome him into the cradle of her thighs. He is more than willing to take her weight, and his hands rub possessive from the crook of her knee to the curve of her waist.

There is no denying himself now that he wants without restraint. He has unlatched the box, and let out his demons, but unlike Pandora, there is little left in the way of hope to sustain him. Elena's fingernails are sharp as seashells; leave ugly half-moons in their wake. She rolls her hips; there is no absolution to be found in the haven of her body. He isn't looking. She doesn't offer. She doesn't say a word. She just keeps staring at him with bruised eyes and swollen lips; her fingers dig harder as if to remind him that he ought to pay his penance. He thrusts inside of her more roughly than he had intended. She moans wantonly (it doesn't matter who hears; there's nothing left to lose, no one left to care) and opens gashes in his back.

She is a hollyhock; he strips her of her petals unwittingly (he can see it in her gaze, the way she opens her mouth, the fall of her hair) and leaves her bereft. There is no going back, and no way to heal, and if he were a better man, he might feel pity with her pieces falling through his fingers. She is raw, and angry, and he takes her vitriol in his mouth as if he could consume her; wipe her clean.

She unfurls like a ribbon; he reads her like an epic. She says a multitude of things without meaning and tells him everything he needs to know with an expression and the alignment of her spine. She ways to him that she hates him with the cruelty of her fingers (searching out the indents and spaces between his bones); she tells him that she loves him (maybe it's in his imagination) by stroking the back of his neck gently, by the way she won't look away from him. She wants to be there; she wants him roughly. There is no sense in it, but he finds that he doesn't mind as he slides hard against the slick embrace of her body.

She is pulling of the grass of his defenses by the handful, but he is dirt; ugly and plain beneath-studded with rocks and worms, fit only to be covered up. He feels unworthy; he is a thief stealing treasure in the night-a pirate plundering the coast-and yet even his profound morality (he hears it in his mother's voice, the sadness, the regret) cannot drag him from Elena's altar. She whimpers his name; he has to pause-to lean his forehead against her shoulder for just a moment-because she's robbed him of his breath and his conviction.

"I never wanted this for you." He tells her, whispering against wet skin (when he can speak again), thrusting hard inside of her as if he can exorcise his shame-burn himself clean in the fires of her body. He feels like a ravisher, though he loves her.

She looks at him betrayed; as if he has injured her irreparably.

She flexes her spine against the wall; he is hit with recoil and surprise simultaneously, takes a step back and slides on the curve of his heel-a rocking horse off of its treads. They fall like autumn leaves; he has never been so aware of his skeleton as it collides with the tile-he sees fireworks, but only because he's banged his head. She bites at his chin, tips herself up on hands supported by his own shoulders, and rolls her hips, watching his face like someone hungry for revenge or affirmation. He blinks up at her; it is not surprise but wonder that colors his features. Blood spreads out behind his head, following the grouting, and it looks as if his skull is taking root, but Elena has galaxies in her eyes, and his spine curves without his consent. He has never loved a woman so much. He has never felt so base for wanting to devour one.

She goes too slow; teasing, punishing him. Demanding that he offer contrition. Words like worship are juvenile (but he would be a priest if prayer were so divine); he can't quite bring himself to even think them, especially in regard to a baby vampire. Elena.

"Just shut up."

She says, bitterness shining liquid in her eyes. He feels cheap. Maybe he deserves it (he does), but he's too cut up inside with the things that have happened (He will never see his brother again), and the things that she's saying, and the things that he has lost. He had wanted Elena Gillbert-wanted all of her. Now she lays in ruin. Her hands are gentle where her words are not; as if she can't decide whether to hate him or to love him.

He hates seeing that look of despair on her face. He hates the way she's holding herself together even now; wants her to fall apart because he will be there to pick her up again.

Elijah rolls them over, Elena on her back, with blood trailing fingers from an already healed wound across the nape of his neck. She bares her teeth like the bars of a cage; fights him, but only because she's feeling combative, and lashing out against Elijah is safe. She makes no attempt to escape; only to injure. Her nails in his skin are little deterrent in the long run; He has endured worse, and will endure better before this is over.

Her hands scrabble, nails rasping over tile like the scales of a lizard; One of his own falls to encircle one of her wrists. The other slides over the burnished curve of her waist, down the outside edge of her thigh, and curls fingers at the crook of her knee once again. They go in circles-dance on an axis in endless revolutions, but he will have what he is owed. He lifts her leg, thrusts hard; she lets out a breathy cry like a flock of birds, and digs her fingers into the meat of his hand. He grumbles, nicks teeth against her slender neck, and thrusts again. It is praise; it is a punishment.

"Faster."

She whines and yet he denies her. She unravels him with a glance, but he will have control in this. His venom matches her own; he will have what he wants, though he's not sure he wants it like this. He has lost forever the chance to see her at her most human; seeing it when they are both dead is nowhere near the same, but still he cannot quell the urge to wind her tight and watch her snap.

"Don't talk. I don't want to hear it."He tells her, and wonders what he's become, because it's true.

Elena arches her back, but he pushes her hard into a floor as cold as their forgotten shower. His fingers fall from her wrist; his palm presses to the ground, and his head lowers (wet hair trails on wet skin; a painting in watercolors) to take her champagne-pink nipple in between his teeth. She lets out a sound; it reminds him of a wind chime, and he suckles. He pulls out, thrusts in again, rough and perhaps a little desperate. He rubs his thumb over her clit, and pants hotly against the petal-soft skin of her breast when she tightens around him like a Chinese finger trap.

"Elijah…"

He's told her once, and he's not a man used to repeating himself, so he doesn't. She's so wet that his thumb slides easy over the pearl of her sex. The sound she makes is just as frantic as he feels, but there's no room for mercy in him right now. Disappointment reigns supreme (though anger makes its presence known); the edges of something sharp and shattered are digging into his sides. He's broken no bones, but feels compressed and flattened, and the only thing he has left is this shadow Elena and her rage.

She writhes under him, attempts to escape the quick flutter of his fingers, the hard slide of his flesh. It's too little, too late, and she brings out the worst in him. Her nails grind like gravel at the ribs along his back; she feels like road rash, or a car accident. She's baring his bones to open air (She strips him, flays him alive, burrows so far inside that he can't find where she begins and where he ends). It hurts like hell. Almost as much as her missing heartbeat and her forgiveness.

She's close; he can tell. She shakes like she's terrified, digs her fingers deep into his flesh like she's afraid she'll lose her grip and fall upward into the sky. Tender lips peruse his hairline as if to beg forgiveness for hurting him with her new, misbegotten strength. He ignores it-he doesn't want it to matter, and so he strives to feel nothing at all. She kisses his skin (The thought comes unbidden; She's so gentle-maybe still his Elena), but her fingers are urgent against the plane of his back. He thinks there must be a metaphor in this; how wretched he is, looking for something untouched in the wreckage left behind.

"Elijah-!"

She yelps again, trying to pull away, trying to push closer, trying to do something; she is an animal and wild in the confine of his arms, but she cannot escape, and is stretched too thin to effectively struggle. The sound of her voice (she speaks like singing; in his weakness all he hears is music), the noise of her feminine panting (a cadence he will remember until the day he dies, should he live another thousand years or more), the wet stick of her hair against his wrists is napalm to his sensibilities. He burns, and feels ashamed for it-she fans the fire, and pulls him in, even as she falls apart.

The little noise she makes when she comes is half-choked, and punctuated by a sharp pain between his shoulder blades (her wandering hands have traveled over every millimeter of his skin, and he's afraid that he'll never exorcise the memory of her touch-she's branded him) from nails like shards of broken bottle. She eviscerates him without ever knowing it (a carnivore to the last-she eats his heart away; he imagines blood leaking form between her teeth, winding its slow, inexorable path along the curve of her chin); her body trembles around him so deliciously that he exhales a reverent groan against her skin and moves more urgently inside of her. He follows close behind, and comes down to the tickle of his own blood along his back, and the girl he might love gone boneless in his embrace.

Loving her makes this so much worse.

She stares up at him with those dark eyes, and he feels as if he's struck her. She is Eve to his Adam; she's offered him everything he's ever wanted in a shiny red apple, and neglected to mention the price until after he's taken a bite. For a moment he hates her, but she looks so sad that his heart melts even as he watches himself turn to stone. He wants to pull away, needs to be somewhere else; he's set fire to something without knowing precisely what it is, and anxiety creases his brows as a river might cut apart the ground. He rolls off of her, and sits, running fingers through his hair as if it will fix all of his mistakes.

A little hand on his cheek stops him, and he turns his head like a flower to the sun without ever realizing that he's been given a choice. Her voice is threadbare as she speaks, but it wraps around him still, and he is incapable of retreat. She has stolen his breath and his autonomy; she could lead him anywhere in the world (Paradise, the inferno, it doesn't matter) if she would only continue speaking to him in such a fashion.

"I need you to tell me that everything is going to be okay."

Elijah is not a man who finds comfort in lying. He tells the truth as a matter of course, but finds himself tripping over words, as unsteady as a newborn. He pulls her into his arms like something precious (She is, even now, even after all of this-He's lost so much, but she's Elena still), and settles his chin on top of her wet hair.

He has known for a long time that he would do almost anything for her.

"It's going to be okay."The lie tastes terrible, but he says it anyway, because she needs to hear it, and for him, that is enough.


End file.
